Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (22 page)

Read Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights Online

Authors: Susan Ford Wiltshire

Tags: #Political Science, #General, #History, #Law, #Reference, #Civil Rights, #test

BOOK: Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights
10.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
page_111<br/>
Page 111
mixed marriages between Christians and Jews, and by the early fifth century Jews were barred from service in imperial offices. As Smallwood concludes: "The peace of the Church set the Jews on the road leading to the medieval ghetto."

34

In summary, religious toleration at Rome worked remarkably well during the era of the republic. Many gods were welcome, even Yahweh, if only the Jews could remember that they were Romans first. With the political crisis of the Roman Empire by the middle of the third century
A.D.
, the way was open for the zealous monotheism of Christianity. When Constantine and Licinius made Christianity a legal entity in
A.D.
313 by declaring complete religious freedom, the end to religious toleration was foreshadowed. Christianity, once the persecuted sect, would eventually become the persecutor.
Freedom of Speech
For the framers, freedom of speech was the necessary condition of a republic. Speech is intimately tied with action in the civic realm, and both speech and action protect the open space that a society requires for both discourse and citizenship.
The presence of free speech does not ensure good government. Its absence, however, does ensure totalitarianism. Brian Vickers shows that rhetoric has always existed in a symbiotic relationship with society
35
and that an ability to speak effectively is crucial to participation in public life and therefore to freedom in a society. "To Plato, of course," says Vickers, "it was deplorable that the rhetorician, not the philosopher, should have such power, but to the majority of students of rhetoric down to the Renaissance its great attraction was just this promise of success in civic life, and its upholding of liberty."
36
Plato opposed free speech for the same reasons Isocrates praised its virtues, virtues characterized by Vickers as "flexibility, pragmatism in a good senseworking with things as they areand realism about the existence of conflict in any group, with the need to find a system that will allow it

 

page_112<br/>
Page 112
expression yet contain it by an agreed political procedure."

37
Rhetoric bridges the dichotomy between public and private discourse, encouraging freedom in both and therefore in society.

Freedom of speech was invented in ancient Athens.
Isegoria
, the "equal right to speak," belonged to every citizen who wished to address the Boule, Ecclesia, or jury courts.
Isegoria
is a term with meaning only within an open society, because freedom of elites to speak as they wish can be taken for granted.
38
Within certain limits, we even know when it was invented. Martin Ostwald places the origin of
isegoria
probably in the era of Cleisthenes (508507
B.C.
).
39
G. T. Griffith thinks it possible that the practice was introduced later, somewhere between 487 and 462, or even in the years immediately following, adding that it may not have been introduced by a specific act of legislation but rather by encroaching usage.
40
A. G. Woodhead generally agrees with Griffith's dating for the Ecclesia, but thinks that
isegoria
in the Boule has origins in the reforms of Cleisthenes. Only gradually between the time of Solon and 460
B.C.
did the people grow confident enough to believe that they might address their fellow citizens.
41
J. D. Lewis places the inauguration of
isegoria
earlier, following the evidence of Aeschines, Lysias, and Demosthenes that it was Solon who first legislated
isegoria
for the assembly in his reforms of c. 594593
B.C.
42
The Athenians never conceived of freedom of speech as an inherent right possessed by individuals. Rather, public speaking was, in the words of George Grote, "the standing engine of government."
43
Freedom of speech was of social and political rather than individual significance. It was meant not so much to encourage an individual's free expression as a city's good government. Herodotus emphasized the social significance of this freedom by saying that because Athens had
isegoria
, free speech enjoyed by all in a democracy, it had become first in war because each man, being free, was zealous to achieve for himself.
44
Pericles, too, insisted on the political character of freedom of speech:

 

page_113<br/>
Page 113
Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well, and those who are most occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics. Of all people we alone do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business, but we say that he is useless. We Athenians, in our own persons, take our decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions, for we do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated.

45

Elsewhere Pericles comments that a person who has good ideas but lacks the ability to express them in public would be of no benefit to the city.
46
Demosthenes argued against restrictions on this freedom not because an individual would suffer but because the city would suffer if orators were not allowed to express their beliefs.
47
Demosthenes characterizes Athenian belief in free speech as opposed to that of the Spartans: "The fundamental difference between the Athenian and the Spartan constitutions is that in Athens you are free to praise the Spartan constitution, whereas in Sparta you are not allowed to praise any constitution other than the Spartan."
48
Demosthenes stated that in Athens, even aliens and slaves could speak with more freedom than citizens could elsewhere.
49
By comparison, for example, in Sparta only about 3 percent of the adult male population possessed full civic rights.
Freedom of speech always presents a dilemma: do opponents of liberal democracy have the right to speak against the system that ensures them freedom of speech, even if their views might lead to the destruction of liberal democracy? The Athenians responded to that paradox on the side of freedom of speech as the lesser danger. Believing that the collective judgment of the people was superior to the views of any one individual, they permitted calumnies lest free speech be eroded by restrictive legislation.
50
As J. A. O. Larsen concludes, popular government or

 

page_114<br/>
Page 114
isonomia
implies not so much equal rights before the law as equal responsibilities under the law.

51
Thomas R. Fitzgerald has shown that there were limitations on the freedom of speech, even in the Athenian assembly.
52
The most obvious is the fact that it was the prerogative only of those admitted to the public assemblies, which omitted all women, slaves, and foreign residents or
metics
. Another was the loss of civic rights or
atimia
. Anyone who had prostituted himself was not permitted by Solon to speak in the assembly,
53
nor was anyone who had squandered his patrimony.
54
Anyone who was condemned three times for unconstitutional motions also lost the right to speak.
55
The most extreme form of silencing was assassination, which happened to Ephialtes, who had made enemies by prosecuting members of the Areopagus on what may have been charges of embezzlement.
56
This also was the fate of Androcles, an adversary of Alcibiades.
57
According to Thucydides, freedom of speech was also suppressed when the oligarchy of the Four Hundred seized power:

Nevertheless the Assembly and the Council chosen by lot still continued to hold meetings. However, they took no decisions that were not approved by the party of the revolution; in fact, all the speakers came from this party, and what they were going to say had been considered by the party beforehand. People were afraid when they saw their numbers, and no one dared to speak in opposition to them. If anyone did venture to do so, some appropriate method was soon found for having him killed.
58
In meetings of the Athenian Ecclesia, all citizens were entitled to speak, and there were no restrictions on speaking time. The water-clock, called the
klepsydra
, was used to limit the time of speeches only in the law courts, not in the assembly meetings on the Pnyx. After the initial agenda was read, the herald announced, ''Who above fifty wishes to speak?" (This practice of allowing older citizens to speak first was apparently discontinued by the time of Demosthenes in the fourth century.) Then the herald would ask simply, "Who wishes to speak?" Any citizen

 

Other books

A Bride Most Begrudging by Deeanne Gist
El misterioso Sr Brown by Agatha Christie
Once Upon a Project by Bettye Griffin
Eureka by William Diehl
You Only Love Twice by Lexi Blake
Honeytrap: Part 2 by Kray, Roberta